Page 51 of Beauty

“Your Highness, I am outnumbered.” Niall lifts me off thefloor where they simply tossed me like I’m a piece of garbage. Niall’s wordsare whispered against my ear, so quiet I can barely make them out.

I want to kiss him. I want his lips on mine, his cocksliding deep. That might quench the fire. My eyes will close, and I’ll pretendhe’s Lach or Shim.

Goddess, it’s cruel to die like this. To know this ache andknow what it means. I will die a virgin, fire torching me from the inside andthe outside.

“Your Highness, you must tell me where the knife is.”

Urgency flavors his command. He’s so close, his skin hiddenunder layers of clothes. Shim. I’ve seen him without his clothes. And Lach. Sobeautiful. I need flesh against mine. It’s all I want now. Shim is close. I cansee him. He’s holding me.

“Shim. Kiss me.”

“Damn it, Bronwyn.” There’s a shuffling as he looks down atme. His eyes shift to dark blue. There he is. But his words make little sense.“I need to know where the knife is. It’s the only proof. I can’t save you, butI have a job to do. If I can’t save you, I have to find someone else. Thatknife is proof. Please. You owe the kingdom.”

Kingdom? What kingdom? Why does he care about the kingdom? Ihurt. I ache. I can’t even breathe. “Kiss me.” Why won’t he kiss me? Lach likesto play vampire games, but Shim is always so quick with kisses. I need both.Where is Lachlan?

My body shakes. Niall won’t leave me be. “The knife. Whereis the knife?”

He keeps talking about the knife. He urges me. Tells methey’re coming. The words don’t make sense.

“The tower. In the tower.” That’s where I hid the knife. Theknife was my father’s. The knife killed me, blood tumbling from my body untilnothingness swallowed me up and then fire brought me back. A phoenix. I was aphoenix, born anew.

They gave me wings.

“Where in the tower?” Niall asks the question with obviousimpatience. “I’m out of time. They’re coming back. I’ll have to find it myself.I am sorry for this, Your Highness. I wish you good luck in your journey.”

And I’m back on the floor. Alone. Abandoned. A cramp hitsme. I need to touch myself, but I can’t make my damn arms work. A journey. I’mtaking a journey.

Into death.

Rough hands pull me up, dragging me when my feet don’t work.Tears stream now. The world is a chaotic mess, and I can’t feel them. They’realways there, somewhere in the back of my mind. I no longer care that they’rean expression of what’s wrong with me. They are the best part of my patheticlife, and I can’t feel them. Real or not, I want them here.

“Lachlan.” Someone is screaming his name. “Shim.”

I smell the fire. So close now. My head snaps back. Someoneslapped me. Blood. I taste it even as another seizure hits. The agony isunimaginable, a body that cries out for solace and will get not an ounce.

Rope bites into my wrists, the only thing holding me up.

The guards laugh. Call me trash. Better off ashes. That’sall I am to these men. Nothing. I mean nothing. My dreams and madness mean lessthan nothing. They will lash me to a pole and burn me then sweep up my ashes.It will be as though I never existed.

Bronwyn Finn died so long ago, and now this girl, this womanI became, will be gone, too. Ashes burned in the fire, sent to the wind. Theache in my gut…pussy. It’s in my pussy. There is no way to deny it now. Theache in my pussy supersedes all other pain. What a horrible way to die—all mysweetness dissolved and I’m left with only a raw ache as the sum of all myyears.

Lachlan. Shim. I call to them. I don’t know if I cry outloud or if it’s only in my head.

I feel the heat of the fire and pray I will see them soon.

ChapterFifteen

Lachlan

The phooka stops at the edge of the forest,his mighty hooves kicking up dirt. Beyond the copse of trees, there’s a smallvillage. Bron’s village. We rode all night, never letting up. I’m not evenclose to tired, as though something as inconsequential as fatigue can’t touchme now.

But fear can.

I dismount from the phooka’s enormous back, my bootsthudding against the forest floor. Something is wrong. I can feel it. Or rathernot feel it.

I don’t have the same connection to Bron that my twin has,but since I arrived on this plane, I can feel her like a whisper in the back ofmy head. Now the noise is gone, as though someone turned it off. It happened afew minutes before, but it scares the crap out of me, as my vampire cousinswould say.

“Something’s gone wrong.” Shim stands beside me, one hand onour steed.